Being someone's "home girl" led to VeLois Harris being someone else's date.
VeLois was strolling across the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1978, near the end of her freshman year.
The first time I saw my future spouse
She says: “He was handsome. When I first saw him he was a football player so he was this strong and handsome African-American man.”
He says: “She was the prettiest thing I had ever seen in my life. And she just looked like someone I needed to be with and to take care of for the rest of my life.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “We were surrounded by a lot of love and a lot of family. It was a blending of a lot of family.”
He says: “It was a prelude to what my married life was going to be. I was running a little late and she had this little mean look on her face, like she was thinking, ‘I can’t believe you’re late.’ So my wedding day started off a little rocky because I was running late. But I arrived and we had a very, very special wedding.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is:
She says: “We are great friends. We still laugh a lot. We’re very affectionate. I trust him. I think just being a police officer he’s just a very caring individual. For me I think that we’re just good friends and I think you still have to have that affection for one another. We show our love to one another.”
He says: “The man in the relationship has to want to be married. You have to want to do that with your life — you have to want to be married, you have to want to be a father and if you don’t you’re not going to be happy. For me that’s what sealed the deal, is that all my life I wanted to be married.”
A guy she knew from high school spoke as he passed, which did not escape the notice of Bennie Bowers, who was walking with him.
"I asked my fraternity brother who was that because he had spoken to her," Bennie says. "He said, 'That was my home girl.' When I saw her, I said I really wanted to get to meet her because she just had this smile that went right to my soul."
Bennie, who was from Benton Harbor, Mich., was well-known on campus, but VeLois didn't know who he was.
"He was an athlete -- a very good athlete. He was a football star on campus," VeLois says. "I was very shy back then so most weekends I came home. I didn't go to a lot of the sporting events. I went to a few of the basketball games, but I did not know him."
VeLois was only 17 then, having started college early at 16 years old; Bennie was 19. They went out on a few dates before summer break.
"I had a car and Bennie didn't have a car. His roommate had a car and he would always have to borrow his roommate's car to take me somewhere," she says. "We didn't have a lot of money so he would take me to McDonald's or we would go somewhere to get something to eat. I didn't tell him I had a car for quite a while."
VeLois spent the summer in Chicago, where she had lived before moving to Woodson with her older siblings. Bennie, who had gone home to Michigan for the summer, drove down to visit.
When they returned to UAPB in the fall they started dating in earnest.
"She had beautiful hair and she has these amazing green eyes, but I had never paid any attention to her eyes because her beauty just ran so deep from her," he says. "She also made me focus more on my academics. And she had this great sense of humor and she laughed at everything that I said and that just confirmed that this was the woman that I wanted to have my children."
Bennie was in a fraternity and VeLois pledged a sorority, so they could almost always find an on-campus activity or a fraternity or sorority dance or party to go to.
VeLois would go home to Woodson on weekends and she would return on Sunday afternoons with leftovers from Sunday dinner.
"I would have something good to eat on Sunday night," Bennie says.
He had been to Woodson and met VeLois' family by then.
"I met my mother-in-law, who was a wonderful lady and who treated me for years like I was her son," he says. "And then my father-in-law was a tough old man who treated me like a son until he passed. I was just always a part of their family."
When VeLois was a junior -- Bennie was a senior -- he decided it was time for the next step.
"I was a long way from home and I didn't have a lot of money. I wanted to seal the deal with VeLois and not let her get away," he says. "I had these kind of expensive speakers -- expensive then might have only been about $300. I took those speakers to the local pawn shop and they gave me $200 or $300 and I used that to get her engagement ring."
He could not wait to give it to her.
"After I pawned those I saw her, right in front of Douglas Hall -- the football dormitory -- I think. I was nervous and I couldn't wait and I asked her to marry me and she said yes," Bennie says.
They were married on June 27, 1981, in First Baptist Church in Woodson, in a big wedding with friends and family present.
They lived briefly in Arkansas and then moved to tiny Clinton, Okla.
"There wasn't much to do there for young people," VeLois says.
Four years later they moved to Novi, Mich., where Bennie became a Michigan State Police officer and VeLois went to work first for a college and then for Kellogg Co.
Bennie retired as a lieutenant with the Michigan State Police after 25 years. They moved to Dallas then, where VeLois retired as the vice president of diversity and inclusion of CHRISTUS Health. Now in Little Rock, Bennie is the director of safety and security for the Pulaski County Special School District and VeLois owns a diversity and inclusion consulting firm.
They have two children -- Johnathan Bowers of Boston and Joi Bowers of Dallas.
The Bowerses renewed their wedding vows in a ceremony in Michigan for their 25th anniversary.
"I tell people all the time that I feel the exact same way today as I did when I first fell in love with her," says Bennie of the woman he fell in love with 40 years ago. "It's not perfect but I don't feel any different."
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High Profile on 02/25/2018